Sunday, March 18, 2012

I don't know where this came from. I rarely draw something so overtly sexual as this. The life drawing piece
was sexy, but not naughty. It may seem ambiguous, but no matter, this comes from deep in the subconscious, and if you knew me,
it’s clear I need a girlfriend or at least a hobby. Hell I’ll take a date where
we talk about hobbies!

I suppose it was just a matter of time before redheads
with large breast crept into my artwork. It will please those who care I haven't dated a single redhead in years (of course we still need to count all the
married ones.) Oh ~ that was bad!

I’m just getting one or two ideas out of my own
head so I can work on that project with Griffin. I am amazed how fast the Lady
Viking was drawn, almost a personal record.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

I’m
starting another project. I know what you’re going to say, but I keep waiting
for that burned out feeling too. You know, like a piece of paper that has had an eraser
rubbed over it too many times, but nope, nothing yet. So I’m just going to roll with it, and keep doing as many projects as I can until I poop out.

Wait till you here what it is though. I’m teaming up with my son Griffin to do
some art!

Cool huh?!

I have him doing a portrait of me in his style, and I get
to do anything I want with his series “The 4th” in my style. He even
said he was excited to see what I can do with it. How many Dads’ get to hear
that from their kid?

All this is going on DeviantART. What a great place for an artist
to be seen. I’m on there because I can put my large pieces on there and have
them printed for cheap. So go check it out and buy something. Search DavidStreetArt
and SoulFireBang. Tell me what you think.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

I was dating this one girl ~ beautiful! I walked out to my truck one night.
There was a Mercer Mayer book tucked under the windshield wiper blade.
If you asked me which one now I couldn't tell you. ~ Oh, I could narrow
it down. The one that was mine was signed "I love you! ~ Jen"

Sucker punched with a children's book!

However did she find that
weakness? It was all over from there ~ All of our kids grew up on Mercer
Mayer. I've given you a few covers to peruse. If you want me to wax all
philosophical and stuff, I won't. He is sweet and simple and to the
point. Just as it should be sometimes. I will say my favorite cover is
"Just Lost!"~ Maybe you can relate.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

It’s
Sunday in Boise, ID. ~ it's windy and cloudy and The Doors are playing while I type. Jim Morrison said something that I related to back when I was young, but now even more so, which may explain my hyper seance of self importance today.

No. 2 (2011)

“I
think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being, but with the soul of a
clown which forces me to blow it at the most crucial moments.”

Isn't that a fun quote?

No.11 (2008)

If
you want to talk to me I would like to think I could be honest and direct, not
just wax all eloquent and stuff about whatever it is you want to know. Also
just as important I hope I would find you as interesting and the conversation
would go both ways.

No. 8 (2008)

Even if it wasn’t interesting, we could always talk about
our shoes. I’ve found shoes more of a hot topic than the weather in some cases.

No. 9 (2009)

However,
if there were times I could not give you the answers you seek, I believe my art is
as much of a tattle-tail if ever there was one. You and I have talked about
some of these self-portraits before, some of these things bear repeating.

No. 7 (2012)

Whether
it’s my lack of ability ~ Oh and regardless of what you’ve heard, good looks and
artist ability only get you so far in this world; about as far as my shoes sometimes ~ Now
where was I? Oh yes, whether it’s my lack of ability as an artist or my lack
of interest in the subject; I tend to clown around with these paintings and not
take them too serious.

No. 6 (2012)

No. 5 (2011)

Maybe
you’re asking yourself “what does he mean by too serious”; I mean things like
self-portraits No.4 ~ the infamous Poor
Sad Bastard Portrait. I was just doing a harmless painting when it hit me. BAM! I dug up all this crap I had stuffed down inside myself; and by pulling it out with my art it cast a new
light on my problems. What a help it was for me.

No. 4 (2012)

So it’s like I say “Be honest and you never have to remember what
you said”. However, I can’t help you when you rediscover your own truths. You’re
on your own from there.

No.3 (2005)

Would you say there's a David Street and Jim Morrison connection in there somewhere?

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Wow. Good luck keeping a secret on the internet! Some time this week, this blog will see 4000 people come and go. The stats are crazy. A lot of people see me on Google. They come for things as diverse as Ian's penguins or Terri's cats, to my Aerosmith logo. Facebook is another door you all come in, much thanks! In celebration of this Georgia and I are letting our new banner fly. Comment on it or any of the other posts. Your opinion is greatly appreciated. Cheers!

I
was asked to do a picture for someone’s boyfriend. Interest was stirred at work
from the “Life Drawing” piece. Great for me, but only so-so for my
model; most people are having trouble looking her in the eyes now!

The girl that asked me to draw a dragon and some fairies is big and beautiful ~ bubbly and full of life. But there is something you need to know
about me. My sister is the one in the family that loves fairies and stuff. Me? Not so much. I think there are far too many of them in this world, and I have no
desire to bring anymore in it.

I
only took the job because this girl is so cool.

As
I sat down planing things out in my head; the dragon was more or less a Komodo dragon with
angel wings. I know you’re thinking that’s six different kinds of wrong, but actually it’s
me and my laws of...Dude, it’s an imagination ~ don't wast it. :)

...and the fairies are big
and beautiful. If I am going to bring more of those pesky things into this world, lets give the laws of gravity and those pretty butterfly wings a run for their money ~ ‘nuff said!

The real pay off was when
I gave her the picture. She turned to her Mom and said with delight, “Mom
the Fairies are Fluffy”.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

I found this while I was researching for my last project; I always liked this story. ~ d.

Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualism, and Fairies

By
Donald E. Simane

Frances and the Fairies, July 1917, taken by Elsie. Midg Quarter
camera at 4 feet, 1/50 sec., sunny day.Photo No. 1. (detail) This photo, and
the four which follow were provided by the James
Randi Educational Foundation. These pictures are cropped to show the
important details clearly.

Photo No. 1, above, taken in July, showed Frances in the garden with a waterfall
in the background and a bush in the foreground. Four fairies are dancing upon
the bush. Three have wings and one is playing a long flute-like instrument.
Frances is not looking at the fairies just in front of her, but seems to
be posing for the camera. Though the waterfall is blurred, indicating a slow
shutter speed, the fairies, are not blurred, even though leaping in the air.

Photo No. 2, taken in September, showed
Elsie sitting on the lawn reaching out her hand to a friendly gnome (about
a foot high, with wings) who is stepping forward onto the hem of her wide
skirt.

Photo No. 3 "Francis and the Leaping Fairy" showed a
slightly blurred profile of Frances with the winged fairy suspended in
mid-air just in front of her nose. The background and the fairy are not
blurred. Hmmm...

Photo No. 4 shows a fairy hovering
in mid-air offering a flower to Elsie. Well, this fairy may be standing
on a branch, for the fairy images are of indeterminable distance from
the camera.

Photo No. 5 "Fairies and their Sunbath" is the only one that looks as if it could have accidental or deliberate double exposure.

Photographic experts who were consulted declared that none of the negatives
had been tampered with, there was no evidence of double exposures, and that
a slight blurring of one of the fairies in photo number one indicated that
the fairy was moving during the exposure of 1/50 or 1/100 second. They seemed
not to even entertain the simpler explanation that the fairies were simple
paper cut-outs fastened on the bush, jiggling slightly in the breeze. Doyle
and other believers were also not troubled by the fact that the fairy's wings
never showed blurred movement, even in the picture of the fairy calmly posed
suspended in mid-air. Apparently fairy wings don't work like hummingbird's
wings.
Hardly anyone can look at these photos today and accept them as anything
but fakes. The lighting on the fairies does not match that of the girls.
The fairy figures have a flat, cut-out appearance. But spiritualists, and
others who prefer a world of magic and fantasy accepted the photos as genuine evidence for fairies.Three years later, the girls produced three more photos.

The girls said they could not photograph the fairies when anyone else was
watching. No one else could photograph the fairies. There was only one
independent witness, Geoffrey L. Hodson, a Theosophist writer, who claimed
to see the fairies, and confirmed the girls' observations "in all details".

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Arthur Conon Doyle not only accepted these photos as genuine, he even wrote
two pamphlets and a book attesting the genuineness of these photos, and including much additional fairy lore. His book, The Coming of the Fairies,
is still in print, and some people still believe the photos are
authentic. Doyle's books make very interesting reading even today.
Doyle's belief in spiritualism, convinced many people that the creator
of Sherlock Holmes was not as bright as his fictional creation.

Some thought Conan Doyle crazy, but he defended the reality of fairies
with
all the evidence he could gather. He counters the arguments of the
disbelievers eloquently and at great length. In fact, his evidence and
arguments sound surprisingly similar in every respect to those of
present-day books touting the idea that alien beings visit us in UFOs.
Robert Sheaffer wrote a clever article drawing these parallels
beautifully.

Over the years the mystery persisted. Only a few die-hards now believe
the photos were of real fairies, but the mystery of the details of how
(and why) they were made continued to fascinate serious students of
hoaxes, frauds and deceptions. When the girls (as adults) were
interviewed, their responses were evasive. In a BBC broadcast interview
in 1975 Elsie said: "I've told you that they're photographs of figments
of our imagination and that's what I'm sticking to."

In 1977 Fred Gettings stumbled on important evidence while working on a
study of early nineteenth-century book illustrations. He found drawings by Claude A. Shepperson in a 1915
children's book which the girls could easily have posessed, and which
were, without a doubt, the models for the fairies which appeared in the
photos.

Illustration for Alfred Noyes' poem "A Spell for a Fairy" in Princess
Mary's Gift Book by Claude Shepperson. (Hodder and Stoughton, no date,
c. 1914, p. 101ff). Compare the poses of these figures with those of three
of the fairies in Photo No. 1. The figures have been rearranged and details
of dress have been altered, but the origin of the poses is unmistakable.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Does it matter? Natural world disappearing from kids books

Books set in nature like "Where The Wild
Things Are" are becoming far less common, according to new research.

Prof. Chris Podeschi discusses his new research finding a sharp decline of nature and animals in children's books.

From wild animals to jungles and forests, a new study says
kids books about nature are becoming a threatened species.
Researchers from several universities reviewed nearly 300
award winning children's titles written between 1938 to
2008. Study co-author, Prof. Chris Podeschi of
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, told 97.3 KIRO FM they found a troubling trend when comparing
books written in the past to the near present.
"Earlier, the books were really sort of more nature
centered, the settings chosen, the animals present were
just more prominent," Podeschi said.
Books like "Where the Wild Things Are, "The Very Hungry
Caterpillar" and "Little Red Riding Hood" have given way
more and more to urban settings with fewer animals.
"We're just worried that along with grownups, now kids are
increasingly isolated from the natural world in their
actual experience."
And he said while there are plenty of great books still
being written about the natural world, they worry people
will ultimately stop caring about nature and animals as
they turn increasingly to a technology centered world.
"We urbanize substantially, park visitation is down as a
society, we turn to electronic gadgets that are more and
more prominent in our lives," he said.
Not exposing kids to nature through books sparked plenty of conversation and disagreement
among the Seattle's Morning News crew. Co-host Linda
Thomas argues kids get a bum rap, and any reading is good
reading.
"I just thought as long kids were reading or parents were
reading to kids, you're ahead of the game there.
I really think as long as kids are reading, it doesn't
matter what they're reading," Thomas said.
Co-host Tom Tangney argues kids get plenty of exposure to
nature from other places. He says his nephew's favorite
show is "Dinosaur Train," a weekly exploration of natural
environments and animals.
"I think there's a real push in all sorts of different
platforms. Nature is more popular than ever," Tangney
says.
"That's not nature, that's the nature channel...a screen
is not the real world," replies co-host Bill Radke.